Sources close to Olmert say he may try to to form bloc including Livni, Lapid, Kadima to challenge Netanyahu if elections advanced to February; former PM upset with Netanyahu's handling of Iran, Palestinians, US relations.

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert has not ruled out returning to politics if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decides toadvance the next general electionto February, sources close to Olmert said Wednesday.

Olmert wascleared of most of the chargesagainst him in three of four corruption cases, and his conviction for breach of trust is not expected to be a legal obstacle to running.

He is still standing trial on bribery charges in the Holyland scandal, but his lawyers believe the prosecution’s case against him is weak.

If Olmert decides to run for office, he would try to form a bloc of parties that would run together, including Kadima, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, and a new party that former ministers Tzipi Livni and Haim Ramon were in the process of forming.

“There is a lot of pressure on him to run,” a source close to the former prime minister said.

“He has not decided or taken any steps. But he is very upset at the way Netanyahu has handled relations with the United States and the Iranian and Palestinian issues, and he is concerned about what could happen with four more years of Netanyahu in power.”

Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz said Wednesday that he had good relations with Olmert but did not want to mire him in politics until he finished his legal obligations.

Livni’s allies rebuffed public overtures from Mofaz on Wednesday, saying that she would not rejoin Kadima if he remained at its head.

Mofaz called for Kadima to build a united front and serve as an alternative to Netanyahu’s Likud in the expected election in the coming months.

“The people of Israel want to replace Netanyahu, but at the moment the polls don’t reflect this,” Mofaz said in an interview with Army Radio.

He called for “those outside of Kadima, and certainly the woman who stood at the head of Kadima, to come and help us replace this bad government.”

Livni, however, is looking in other directions to make her political comeback.

A Kadima MK close to the party’s former leader said “there is no possible scenario” in which Livni would return to be No. 2 or 3 on the list, and only a slight chance that she would come back if she could lead Kadima again.

“Mofaz made every mistake, insulted Livni, and what does he want now? For her to come and save Kadima?” the MK asked. “Activists call [pro-Livni MKs] and say they were wrong, but that doesn’t help.”

According to the MK, there is no Kadima without Livni, and he said the next election would come down to “Tzipi or Bibi.” He added that if Livni returned to politics, she would lead the Left-Center of the political map and replace Netanyahu.

“If Mofaz wants, he can be in the fifth spot or lower on Livni’s list,” he quipped.

On Tuesday, Channel 10 reported that Livni met with former Interior Minister and senior Shinui member Avraham Poraz to discuss the possibility of using his Hetz (Arrow) party in the next election.

Poraz founded Hetz in 2006, when he and 10 other MKs broke off from Shinui.

If Livni revives Hetz, she will save herself the bureaucratic headache of registering a new party. In addition, new parties may spend only NIS 13 million on an election campaign, but Livni will be able to increase the budget if she takes over Hetz.

Berlin said the offending tweet was meant for her private Facebook account and was mistakenly sent from the Free Gaza Twitter account. The Canadian daily reported that a tweet from Free Gaza quoted her as saying, “I shared it without watching it. I am sorry that I just sent it forward without looking at it. It won’t happen again.”

The US head of the pro-Palestinian group The Free Gaza Movement unleashed a wave of criticism over the last several days because of a Twitter post asserting that Zionists ran concentration camps and murdered Jews.

Greta Berlin, the American co-founder of the group Free Gaza, tweeted on September 30 “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews.”

Berlin’s tweet blaming Zionists for the Holocaust caught the eye of Avi Mayer, who oversees social media for the Jewish Agency for Israel. Mayer was the first to draw attention to Berlin on his Twitter feed, writing “the folks behind the #Gaza flotilla – reveal themselves to be the lowest anti- Semites.” Mayer documented the chronology of Berlin’s attacks on Jews and Israel, as well as the Holocaust revisionism of the Free Gaza group.

Mayer wrote in a blog post, “The Free Gaza Movement is the key actor behind the successive flotillas that have sought to violate the maritime closure around Gaza in support of Hamas. It is chaired by Huwaida Arraf, who also heads the International Solidarity Movement (and has endorsed the use of violence against Israel), and its Board of Advisers includes such luminaries as Naomi Klein, Peter Hansen, and Jenny Tonge.”

He continued, “It has been endorsed by a range of organizations and individuals, including Desmond Tutu, Jewish Voice for Peace, Code Pink, the Palestine Red Crescent Society, the Rachel Corrie Foundation, George Galloway and Natorei Karta International.”

Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the head of the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, said “The NGO activists in the so-called ‘Free Gaza’ campaign have always reflected obsessive, irrational and immoral characteristics, and the revelation of links to crude anti-Semitism provides additional evidence,” in an email to The Jerusalem Post.

“The members of organizations like the ISM [International Solidarity Movement] and others behind Free Gaza, that lead the political war to demonize Israel and give support to terror groups, have been unmasked in an entirely unambiguous manner,” he said. “Their facade of human rights and humanitarian aid, which was never supported by had any tangible evidence, has completely disintegrated.”

According to an article in Canada’s National Post, Berlin said the offending tweet was meant for her private Facebook account and was mistakenly sent from the Free Gaza Twitter account. The Canadian daily reported that a tweet from Free Gaza quoted her as saying, “I shared it without watching it. I am sorry that I just sent it forward without looking at it. It won’t happen again.”

Berlin linked her tweet to a video ostensibly from conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins, who propagates the views that Jews are responsible for the Holocaust and are admirers of Hitler.

Mayer wrote that “This video, endorsed and promoted by @FreeGazaOrg, claims Jews want to erect a statue of Hitler in Israel to thank him” and that the person speaking in the video “appears to be the late anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins.”

Berlin and her organization, the Free Gaza Movement, are linked to radical Islamist organizations and seek, according to critics, to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.

Berlin is currently on a book tour in Canada for co-writingFreedom Sailors: The Maiden Voyage of the Free Gaza movement and how we succeeded in spite of ourselves.

Organizers of the silent walk in Bethlehem receive threats from Palestinian activists angry over "normalization" with Israel.

Organizers of the Bethlehem Walk said Tuesday they have decided to cancel the event following strong protests and threats from Palestinian activists, who objected to the participation of Israelis.

The event was supposed to take place on October 5 in Bethlehem.

Israelis, Palestinians and members of other nations and religions from around the world were supposed to walk quietly in Bethlehem to promote “change and acknowledge basic common grounds and sow the seeds of understanding and acceptance.”

The organizers said in their invitation that “walking in mindfulness is a quiet walk full of respect for the here and now. It is an experience that helps us to develop calm, balance and confidence when faced with the challenges of reality.”

However, the planned event drew strong condemnations from Palestinian youth activists in Bethlehem, who expressed outrage over the participation of Israelis.

The activists called for cancelling the event under the pretext that it was a form of “normalization” with Israel. They also threatened to prevent Israelis from “desecrating our holy city and sites.”

The organizers said they decided to cancel the event “out of respect for the feeling of all those who were outraged by the march.”

One of the Palestinian organizers, who asked not to be identified, said his group “had no intention to spark violence and outrage.”

"We, the organizers of the walk, deeply honor and hear clearly the responses of all of you who have been challenged by the walk. Our purpose is not to perpetuate anger nor violence, and not to undermine any view, but to seek to deeply listen to all voices and hear their concerns and needs with the hope of reaching a common ground that makes all of us stand strong in facing and ending all forms of oppression and violence and create a future where true peace, justice, and equality is lived and honored for all and by all.

Therefore, honoring the concerns of each and everyone of you, the walk will not take place at this time as originally planned. We acknowledge the disappointment of our supporters and affirm our faith in the possibility of peace in our troubled land, and our determination to persevere together to that end. We ask you to remain in contact with us, spread the word, and join us in this vision no matter where you are and no matter how you do it."

See how tolerant they are? They "honor" even the bigots among them!

They are creating an alternate event for tomorrow:

As we move a step forward in creating a new consciousness for real peace, acknowledging the deep work needed by all of us, Israelis are invited to join together on Friday, October 5, for mindful walking and listening circles, at the Spiritual Center in Neve-Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. We will start at 1000 and end at 1400. Please bring a hat, drink and food.

It appears that the only place that peace activists can actually demonstrate tolerance is in that hateful apartheid state of Israel, not in beautiful liberal "Palestine."

"The publics have been only fed that the other side is not interested and that the leaders are not trying to shape the societal landscape. It's a lack of leadership," he says. "Leadership is sometimes saying tough things to your own people and good things about the other side."

Wouter

______________________

Activists: Now, yes now, is the time for US to push for MidEast peace

Israeli-Palestinian group OneVoice is bucking conventional wisdom and trying to drum up support in America for another presidential push toward a final agreement.

A major Israeli-Palestinian activist group is bucking conventional wisdom by arguing that now is the right time to engage Americans in the moribund Middle East peace process.

The presidential campaign season is traditionally a terrible time to make any progress on foreign policy, especially during elections focused on pocketbook issues.

But when the presidential candidates and their parties brought Israeli and Palestinian issues into the spotlight this fall, the group OneVoice decided to seize the opportunity to insert itself into the debate.

Representatives of the group are touring the US this fall, urging American voters to sign a petition asking the presidential candidates to make rebooting the stalled peace process a top priority after Election Day. Their reasoning: The two-state solution cannot be achieved without US help – a solution that they say is running out of time.

"Regional stability lies in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, we are witnessing the rapidly growing distance between the present and peace," reads the petition.

The group's sense of urgency is shared by analysts and former architects of the peace process, even if they don't all share in the optimism that the US can be moved to act soon.

"Everyone recognizes that you cannot assume the two-state solution will always be a viable option," says David Makovsky, director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Project on the Middle East Peace Process. "If you ignore it, you ignore it at your own peril. If it festers, it will breed radicalization."

Ron Pundak, an Israeli architect of the Oslo accords and chairman of the Palestinian-Israeli Peace NGOs Forum, argues that current trends like settlement expansion are closing the door on the possibility of Israel and Palestine as two separate states.

"What is happening now, as a result of the policies of the last 19 years, is this option of two states… is becoming a less and less realistic option because of realities on the ground, because of a change of the atmosphere," he says.

OneVoice's hope is that their petition will prove to whomever wins the Oval Office on Nov. 7 that tackling this political land mine will have payoff with voters, and that he will make it a top priority from the outset of his term. No matter how many signatures they get on their petition – it had 482 yesterday and they are aiming for thousands – they will be presenting it to the winner that Wednesday.

But any such petition and publicity effort will be up against tremendous inertia in Washington, where past presidents have devoted much energy to the project only to see hopes dashed.

Presidential interest?

Mr. Pundak says that the perception in Israel is that Mr. Romney has already written off the peace process, seeing no chance of success, while President Barack Obama is likely to make another attempt if re-elected. He believes that President Obama really wants to be one of the architects of a two-state solution.

"The question is whether his aides will tell him, 'Why bother? It's too difficult. Why should you enter into something where everyone has failed?'" he says.

But, he quips, "Maybe he should be the signateur for at least one peace agreement. After all, he is a Nobel peace laureate."

Mr. Makovsy is less sure that either Romney or Obama will be raring to jump-start the peace process.

"The people in the Middle East tend to think a second-term president is king of the US because he's untethered to re-election. I think the laws of political physics still apply," he says. "No president wants to bleed political capital if he thinks this issue is going to be a loser, and therefore the leaders of the Middle East have got to entice even a second-term president if they want him to take this issue on."

What could entice a president, particularly a first-term Romney, to take on the loaded portfolio? Signs that Israeli and Palestinian leaders are willing to deal with interim steps, such as borders and security issues and a new level of honesty with their populations about the necessity of peace, to name a few, Makovsky says.

Peace as self-interest, security

OneVoice would like the national security debate in Israel to include the unresolved peace process.

"We need to convince Israel that the status quo is the most dangerous thing for national identity and security," says Adva Vilchinski, the Israeli representative on the OneVoice delegation touring the US. "We cannot move on with the future we want."

Appealing to concern for the other has had minimal effect in the past, so the organization has instead focused on appealing to each population's "enlightened self-interest," as they refer to it – framing the importance of a two-state solution purely in terms of national interest.

In the case of Israel, that means things like highlighting the resources poured into security in the West Bank, particularly for the settlements, and reminding Israelis that the demographics are not in their favor. The Palestinian population is growing much faster than Israel's.

For OneVoice Palestine, it's about proving to Palestinians that only the two-state solution can give them the kind of national identity and control over their destiny that they desire, says Ahmad Omeir, the Palestinian representative on the OneVoice tour.

"The level of skepticism is really scary," says Mr. Omeir, speaking about Palestinians' opinion about the viability of a peace process. Much of the organization's work is about "diffusing fear" that there is no partner on the other side, he says.

The majority of Israelis and Palestinians want a two-state-solution – according to Vilchinski, more than 70 percent of Israelis and Palestinians said in 2009 that were willing to live with two states – but don't believe it will happen because they see no partner on the other side.

Makovsky blames the leaders for that.

"A majority of Israelis and Palestinians want a two-state solution, but then you ask them the next question, 'Does the other guy want peace? Does the other guy want a two-state solution?' The answer is no. Why is there this disconnect?" he says.

"The publics have been only fed that the other side is not interested and that the leaders are not trying to shape the societal landscape. It's a lack of leadership," he says. "Leadership is sometimes saying tough things to your own people and good things about the other side."

Islamic Jihad is now celebrating its 25th anniversary in Gaza, with parades and other public events to publicize its commitment to destroying Israel. The celebrations are done with the full permission of Hamas, which even featured them on its website.

(According to the photo's EXIF information, that last picture may have been taken in 2009, and Islamic Jihad wanted to make the parade look more impressive.)

In an interview with Islamic Jihad media, the leader of the movement, Sheikh Ibrahim al-Najjar, "Abu Hazim," bragged that Islamic Jihad has not budged one iota from its founding principles of destroying Israel and replacing it with an Islamist state.

Najjar said that this year's anniversary festival was a "referendum of resistance," meaning that it is proof that Palestinian Arabs still embrace terror as their means of destroying Israel.

He also bragged:

Praise be to God, the al-Quds Brigades of military force [of Islamic Jihad] is powerful enough to dictate its will to invalidate any agreement that does not do justice to the Palestinians and did not give them them the right to return to their entire land.

People who still cling to the idea of the sacred "peace process" never really discuss Islamic Jihad and how it has effective veto power even in the unlikely event that Palestinian Arab leadership can accept a reasonable compromise with Israel.

In the wisdom of Oslo, it is better to leave all the impossible issues for the end of the "process."

"[The German generals] were executed [following the Nuremberg Trials], and so the Zionist secret was safe. And now the Zionists were now in control of the world, because their National Socialist allies were now gone from history and the Zionist had free rein, so they set up the State of Israel. And in fact some Jews themselves even claim that there should be a statue to Adolf Hitler in Israel because he created the State of Israel, which is actually true. [laughs] Without Adolf Hitler, Israel would not exist." (06:57-07:32)

The tweet read, "Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews," and contained a link. The link led to this horrifying video

Among the shocking statements made in the video are the following:

"What is going on is the grand Nazi scheme. There's only one political party in the world today and that's called the Nazis. And you say, 'well, Adolf Hitler died in 1945 and that was the end of the Nazi Party.' But that's because you've never been told what the origin of 'Nazi' is. 'Na' is National Socialism, which was the German Nazis, and in 1923 there was a double agent who came to Hitler and he said to Hitler, 'look, your Nazi Party, your National Socialist Party, is not getting off the ground. You need an alliance.' And he suggested that they ally with the Zionist Party. So the 'Na' of National Socialism joined with the Zionist Party, the World Zionist Party, in 1923, and ever after was known as the Nazis, N-A-Z-I. The 'zi' was for 'Zionists. But of course no one knew that, because our popular mythology is that the terrible Nazis were attacking the Jews." (00:38-01:36)

"And of course Hitler, allying himself with the Zionists, he said, 'after all, you're right,' he said, 'we have the same goals.' And so he allied with the Zionist Party and the mission of the Nazis was to force the anti-Zionist Jews to accept Zionism. And this is what the concentration camps were about. They put the anti-Zionist Jews in the concentration camps and they were placed under the direct administration of the Sonderkommandos, who were the Zionist Jews. So the concentration camps were run by the Zionist Jews in order to punish and get rid of the anti-Zionist Jews, which they did. And of course that's a part of the Holocaust that you're never told." (4:04-4:48)

"[The German generals] were executed [following the Nuremberg Trials], and so the Zionist secret was safe. And now the Zionists were now in control of the world, because their National Socialist allies were now gone from history and the Zionist had free rein, so they set up the State of Israel. And in fact some Jews themselves even claim that there should be a statue to Adolf Hitler in Israel because he created the State of Israel, which is actually true. [laughs] Without Adolf Hitler, Israel would not exist." (06:57-07:32)

"And [the press] demonize people, so that you're filled with anger against the 'Holocaust people' who murdered all the Jews in Germany, and people do get very angry because of these things, and they don't even know what they're angry about because they're not told the facts, and never will be told the facts because the press is totally in the hands of the bankers... In fact, in the States we had this total monopoly on television by three television networks, which were all controlled by Zionists." (08:16-09:28)

I happened across the tweet around 9:45 p.m. Israel time on October 1 -- approximately 30 hours after in had been posted (I didn't see it earlier due to theSukkotholiday).

"The Jew has always functioned best as a panderer, a pornographer, a master of prostitution, an apostle of sexual perversion, an enemy of the prevailing sexual standards and prohibitions of the gentile community."

"This religious ceremony of drinking the blood of an innocent gentile child is basic to the Jew's entire concept of his existence as a parasite, living off of the blood of the host."

"Treason, fraud, perversion, all the hallmarks of Jewish life among the gentiles in the Diaspora. And it is parasitism."

"…the existence of the Jewish parasite upon the host is a crime against nature, because its existence imperils the health and the life of the host. Thus, everything that the Jew does in connection with this parasitic existence is a criminal act, and part of an overall criminal existence."